Lies And Libido Make Spring-break Love Short-lived

March 19, 1986|By Moira Bailey of the Sentinel staff

Spring break in Daytona Beach. A freewheeling, extended college mixer at the shore. A chance for love-hungry students to get to know each other. Or will they? How much do you tell a perfect stranger, who may attend a school thousands of miles from yours, whose only common denominator is that he is drinking out of the same beer keg as you, and whose intentions may or may not be wholly honorable?

Ann, a 20-year-old education major at East Carolina University, doesn't tell much. What she does tell usually isn't true. ''I've lied like out of my teeth,'' she says. In conversations with interested members of the opposite sex, she has majored in subjects including pre-med, pediatrics, nursing, biology -- as she puts it, ''all the ones that are so good.''

Ann says she does this ''just for the laugh of it.'' The general consensus from Ann and her friends from North Carolina is that the boys on the beach aren't serious about anything except, of course, sex. Plus, these guys tell some pretty tall tales themselves in order to impress the girls. Turnabout, in the spring break mating ritual, is fair play.

Ann and her friends sit on towels stretched out on a platform behind The Plaza, one of Daytona's most hopping hotels. It is packed to the gills with students, many of them clutching beers to ward off the mid-afternoon heat.

They have lots of stories to tell of stories they have been told. No one really thinks that the abbreviated romances of spring break, fueled by the sight of sun and skin and surf, will last.

''It would be nice . . . but I'm not expecting it,'' says 20-year-old Dawn, also from ECU.

After four days in Daytona Beach, the girls can already count one marriage proposal among them. They think one of their prospective suitors was a state university student dressed in Ivy League clothing -- Yale University, to be exact -- in order to make a good first impression.

A friend of theirs from ECU told a woman he was in medical school when, in reality, he hasn't declared a major.

Beth, 21, met a man who told her he owned ''all the Florida beaches.'' His jeans, in serious need of patching, gave him away.

''What about the guy who said, 'I'm so shy, I'm so shy'? '' asks Dawn. ''He never shut his mouth. He asked us to tell him how to come on to girls.''

The girls say they assume false identi- ties to protect themselves against guys who get too friendly too fast -- such as those who ask ''What's your room number?'' after they say ''Hello'' -- or those who don't pass image muster.

But the trio fibbed about their ages when they encountered a group of guys they found interesting and a bit more eligible. They told them they were sophomores. ''We decided they'd look at us differently if we said we were freshmen,'' says Stacey.

Gretchen, a student from Northern Illinois University, says her experience with truth-stretching began during the 25-hour bus ride to Florida. One eager male sat down next to Gretchen, 20, and said, ''I'm not trying to make any moves. I just want to hold your hand.'' He later announced he had a ''desperate urge'' to kiss her.